I've had a series of funny phone calls this week, in which the speaker expresses total shock that I answer the phone. While I am notorious for never answering my phone, the real cause of the callers' surprise is that the number where I answer is sometimes the third one they have called looking for me. Why? I just relocated to Irvine, California as I've joined the faculty of the UC Irvine School of Law, after a year-long visit at Harvard Law School and several years on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law. For those of you looking for detailed information, the bio link on the Credit Slips homepage will get you what you need.
With all this relocation, one great thing about Credit Slips is that we are still here at the same URL. As Bob noted a few weeks ago, we just had our five year anniversary. In "blog years," that has to make us at least 50! Over the years, we have said good bye to some participants (including one just featured in Doonesbury), welcomed new contributors, and had dozens of great guests. While I've worked at 3 to 5 law schools during that period (depending on how you count), the bigger change has been in the world of debt and credit. When we started the blog, consumers were heading into peak household leverage, the economy was booming, and regulation was a dirty word, even among some Democrats. Today, a double-dip recession looms, retrenchment in consumer borrowing has set in, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a reality. While I plan to stay put at UC Irvine for years to come, I bet the world of credit and debt will continue to change rapidly.